This short classroom film about pioneer life in eighteenth-century Kentucky was produced in 1941, and it makes for an interesting historical artifact in its own right. The frontiersmen are optimistic and hardy, the community in the fort is pleasant and sociable, the food is plentiful, the family slave is faithful, all the Indians are offscreen, and there will “always be freedom out there.” Oh, and the candles are ready in plenty of time for the big hoedown.

How would today’s frontier historians tell this story differently? For that matter, how would the pioneers themselves tell it?